Pretty Little Lion by Suleikha Snyder
9
Elijah was only afraid of a handful of things in the world. Top of the list? Disappointing his mum. She’d cried when he cut his locs before enlisting. Full-on sobs, like he’d severed a limb. “Aw, Mum, don’t be daft,” he’d told her, wrapping her in his arms, towering over her by more than a full head. “It’ll grow back, yeah? It always grows back.”
“Damn fool,”she’d called him in return. “You’re caging your lion. And for who? For the army?” She’d shoved at his chest, not lacking in strength just because she lacked in size, slipping into Patwah and her fur as she scolded him for turning his back on his heritage, on his self-preservation to fight in the white man’s war.
“You moved here,” he’d reminded her. She was part of the Windrush generation, which British MPs and the PM were still pretending to care about even now, years after the fucking Windrush scandal and sodding Brexit had proved the contrary. Raised in Clarendon on the southern coast of Jamaica, Mum had settled in Tottenham with his grandparents as a teenager. Then she’d ended up with his father in Hackney. Had four kids—four cubs at that. “You married Dad. I’m as English as I am Jamaican. As human as I am lion.”
“You don’t have to tell me, Teacha.” Mum had sucked her elongated teeth, wielding his nickname with the gentle mocking he deserved, stroking his face with her half-shifted paw. “But you’ll always be Black to them.”
Elijah had never forgotten that lesson. Not at training. Not in the desert. Not even when he was having a pint with Jack at the Scottish pub on Forty-Sixth and Ninth. He remembered it now as he pulled the lion to the surface. Not the shift, the change, but the power behind it. Coursing through his veins, his pores. His beard growth thickened. The stubble on his scalp spiraled out into hair and then locs. That was a neat trick he’d developed—the locs. And taught his sisters, who were still finessing how to incorporate braids so they didn’t have to spend seven hours in a salon chair while their stylist stopped to eat fish fry or watch West African soaps.
It was a rush, like the best possible high, as his locs expanded down to his shoulders. His human mane. His beast uncaged. Elijah reeled in the spirit before he could sprout back hair and fur between his toes—a lesson learned decades ago when he’d first experimented with shifting only parts of his appearance—and gave himself a good once-over in the mirror. He didn’t look much like the hired muscle who’d worked Aston’s VIP room. But his mum was right: he would always be a Black man.
That was still dangerous in America. In the world in general. More dangerous now that there were checkpoints at state lines and the country’s northern and southern borders. He and Meghna would get stopped on the way to the lab, asked for their papers, asked why they were crossing out of New York. That was just a fact of life in the six years after the 2016 election—what the leftist blogs and resistance podcasts called the Darkest Day. Nine out of ten people stopped at borders were people of color. If those people were lucky, they got through because their papers were up to snuff. Or they were let off with a hefty fine. Unlucky…? Well, that was what the detainment camps were for. Housing more and more of the unseen and the unheard all the time. Refugees, asylum seekers, citizens, humans and supernaturals alike.
Elijah riffled through his personal lockbox for IDs that matched his new look. He was sliding them into his wallet when Meghna walked back into the room, smelling of the standard soap and shea butter lotion they stocked in the Locker’s shower facilities, braiding her still-damp hair. If she was surprised by the length of his hair, she gave no indication. The woman was entirely too good at keeping her thoughts contained. Her personal lockbox was internal. “Getting your papers in order? We should be fine at the checkpoints,” she said as she wrapped an elastic around the end of her thick plait. “My father’s security clearance extends to me.”
She’d picked out skinny jeans and a black sweater from the wardrobe closet. She had practical trainers on her feet instead of stiletto heels. Her makeup was subtle—he wasn’t stupid enough to think it was nonexistent. Still, she looked more fresh-faced and innocent than the glam goddess who’d been on her knees in that closet or the stunning sexpot who’d taken him in bed. The naiveté—or maybe arrogance—of her assumption only underscored the image. “That might be enough if you had your movie-star ex or your criminal on your arm, love. But we can’t take any chances traveling together,” he reminded her. “Everything’s got to hold up to scrutiny.”
“Point taken.” She grimaced, surprising him with her immediate acknowledgment. And then with the return of the flighty flirt from the party. The one who batted her eyelashes and played the men around her. “I should know better than to be so careless,” she said lightly. “Two days into our acquaintance, and I’m already slipping.”
“Acquaintance? Is that what we’re calling it?” He snorted, slipping his wallet into the inner pocket of his jacket and then moving to the weapons cabinets. He didn’t like how easily she shifted gears, going seamlessly from badass to bimbo and back again. It was uncomfortable…and purposefully so. She meant to keep him off-balance. So he’d best keep his feet planted firmly on the ground. “D’you need anything? We don’t like loaning out firearms, but we’ve loads of blades and other little toys.”
She was already moving to the wall with the KA-BARs. There were switchblades, Swiss Army knives, and daggers, too. Throwing stars. Hatpins. Even a few forks and spoons. Everything and anything a stabby girl’s heart could desire. “Pretty,” she murmured appreciatively. “And deadly. I can relate.”
“Thought you might.” Elijah unlocked the cabinet for her so she could do a proper bit of shopping. She scooped up a nice little dagger and two hatpins, as well as a pouch of stars. He didn’t bother sifting through the merchandise himself. He had his weapons on him at all times, and they’d always served him well.
So why did he feel like he wasn’t nearly armed enough against her? This gorgeous, dangerous supernatural who hadn’t even revealed the full extent of her powers yet. We, she’d said in the lift, claiming kinship. Separating humans as them. And her explanation of apsaras… That had told him next to nothing. A cursory internet search had offered up the same information. Maybe she could destroy him with a single thought. Maybe she was a magic caster like Jack. Maybe she didn’t need powers at all to wreck him. Maybe all she had to do was smile and crook her finger.
Elijah hated feeling vulnerable. He hated feeling vulnerable to her even more. But he was just going to have to get used to it…and find a way to turn it into an advantage.
* * *
Finn was uncharacteristically silent as they gathered up anything they’d need from their cubes and headed for the elevators. Once the doors were closed behind them and he’d scanned in for his living quarters, he finally spoke. “He turned me, you know. Octavio Estrada. Made me what I am.”
She hadn’t known that, actually, but it didn’t surprise her. Finn’s reaction in Command had been so raw, so unlike his usual lighthearted and annoying antics. “Do you know where to find him?”
“I always know where to find him. It’s a bloody nuisance.” Finn’s hand hovered over his chest. The left side. “It’s like a pulse. Like that old movie Highlander. I just feel him.”
“The Whoosh,” Grace supplied. When he paused his brooding to look at her with his trademark brow lift, she shrugged. “I watched the TV show in syndication. We didn’t get fancy cable until I was a sophomore in high school. Ba wanted us to focus on our studies, not rot our brains.”
Mama had wanted that, too. Had demanded it. Between both of their parents’ views on hard work and good grades, Grace and her siblings had no option but to excel. But they’d been allowed to watch TV as long as they finished their homework right after dinner each night. And while Highlander with her brother Ernie had been fun…it was ER and Chicago Hope that had changed the course of her life. Those hours were when Dr. Grace Maria Leung, Dr. Freeze, was conceived.
It was nothing compared to how a vampire was made, though. Through bites and blood loss and blood gain. Death and rebirth. She’d studied all the ways the human body could break down so she could—as a surgeon—circumvent them. Or so she’d thought until she’d met supernaturals like Finn and Elijah. She was a master in the OR, nearly unparalleled, but no amount of skill and study could explain a man shifting into a lion. Or why ingesting blood could keep someone alive and youthful for more than a century.
“Do you hate him for it?” she wondered. “Is there…and I hate myself for this pun…bad blood between you?”
Finn’s delighted cackle made the terrible joke completely worth it. He lost some of the brooding and the pallor and gained a twinkle in his bright-blue eyes. “Didn’t know you had it in you, love,” he said. And his smile remained even as they stepped out into the subbasement that comprised his home. It sat just above the Locker…and well below the dangers of the sun, which wouldn’t kill him but didn’t make him feel particularly perky either.
She’d been over a dozen times in the past few years. One memorable time in the past month. Cool hands skating across her skin…hot mouth against the back of her neck…a warm whisper directed at someone else, urging them to “Come and join the fun.” She was grateful that he was occupied with her questions and didn’t notice said memories heating her cheeks. They hadn’t talked about that night in the weeks since. They hadn’t really needed to. Because they fell into step beside each other in the hallways. Reached for each other’s hands in times of crisis. Still argued and pretended it wasn’t flirting. Though where Finn was concerned, nearly everything counted as flirting.
They’d gone on much like they always had. Just…more somehow. And that strange new intimacy was apparent in how Finn finally addressed her concerns about him and Estrada. “I’m…conflicted, I reckon,” he admitted, tossing his duster over the back of the red leather sectional and then turning back to her. “I don’t hate what my life has become. Only the circumstances that led to it.” There was none of the lightness he employed amid the others. None of the truths wrapped in equal parts leering and lies. His brilliant-blue eyes were subdued, full of contemplative depth only she and a select few others knew him capable of. “I would’ve liked to have had more of a choice. An ‘informed decision,’ you might say. I trusted Tavi Estrada, and he used that. He used it to mold me into what he wanted me to be. A vampire. An agent. He could’ve just used the truth.”
Grace echoed his weary laughter with a gentle one of her own as she playfully shoved at his shoulder. “Finn Conlan advocating for the truth. Who would’ve guessed?”
He drew her in for a hug, still so somber and serious. “You know I’ve never once lied to you, Grace of my heart,” he murmured against her temple. He smelled like nighttime and whiskey and the smoke he swore he couldn’t shift into. “I might tailor things for others. But never for you. You see all of me as I am. You have from the start. So did he. The difference is, you would never hurt me.”
Why did her chest ache all of a sudden? With something deep and profound that defied diagnosis? “Not on purpose,” she assured fiercely, glad he couldn’t see the emotion she blinked away as she ducked her head.
“Precisely. And that’s why you’re here with me, and Tav is…probably at Hector’s.” Finn’s brows furrowed in contemplation as he broke their embrace and stepped back.
“Hector’s on 54th? So close?” It was a popular family-owned Cuban restaurant and music venue within walking distance. Twenty minutes, ten or fifteen at a good clip. How utterly bizarre to realize that one of their potential assets was so easily found. Practically under their noses this entire time.
He nodded. “The café used to be on Columbus Avenue. Upper West Side. It had just opened the year we met. Run by the one-and-only Hector himself. Tavi swore that Hector’s rice and beans tasted just like his bisabuela’s. He could only eat just a little bit, so it was my prevampiric job to finish the plates. A delicioso task, if I do say so myself.”
Grace winced at his atrocious Spanish accent, but she gave him an A for effort. It was still better than most of his attempts at Cantonese. What was more worrisome, though, was Estrada’s adherence to habit after all this time. “And you think he still goes there? Isn’t that a risk, given his line of work?”
“I daresay he doesn’t give a damn.” Finn snorted. “We all have the things we can’t give up. The things that we make excuses for. For Tavi, it’s Hector’s. If he’s in the city on a Saturday night, that’s where he’ll be. Sitting in with the band. Playing guitar and singing old Cuban songs. Drinking too much rum. We saw Celia Cruz there, you know. Tito Puente too. It was grand. A different time. Can’t say I blame him for wanting to revisit it.”
But it didn’t fit the image they’d constructed of the cold and cunning vampire who had no allegiances, no loyalty to anyone except himself. Grace didn’t like that. An anomaly meant a complication. It often made the life-or-death difference during surgery. “What about you? You’ve never wanted to revisit that time? Never had the urge to drop by and see if he’s there?”
“No. I’ve never had the need. Why dwell on the past?” Finn pressed a smacking kiss to the bump of her high ponytail, as if to signal a change of topic, a change of tone. Maybe he didn’t even realize he’d just told a flagrant lie. More to himself than to her. “What do we think? Dress to impress? Show up with my new love on my arm, shove it in his face that I’ve traded up?”
Grace almost opened her mouth to ask if he was really that petty. Except she already knew the answer. Yes. Finn was definitely that petty. “If you think I’m going to hang off your arm and bat my eyelashes at you, you’ve got another thing coming,” she warned instead, following him down the apartment’s marble-tiled hallway and toward his bedroom suite.
“If I wanted that, I’d ask Nathaniel,” Finn pitched over his shoulder.
It was her turn to cackle with delight. Mostly at the mental picture of one of New York City’s most eligible bachelors batting his eyelashes. Not that Nate had been picking up their calls. The official excuse was that he and his law partner, Dustin Taylor, were too busy setting up their own firm after being forced out of Dickenson, Gould, and Smythe. Unofficially, she knew Nate was running scared. He’d experienced the full gamut of Third Shift adventures in a very short time. The adrenaline rush. The crash. The affirmation of life after it was all over. He’d slipped out of Finn’s bed without so much as a note.
“Why does everyone leave me?”That vulnerable murmur, imbued with so much hurt, when Finian turned and found the empty space where their lover should have been… It clicked into place for Grace now. Why Finn nurtured his promiscuous reputation. Why he let people walk away without chasing them. Because it was easier than trusting them to stay. And Tavi Estrada had left him, too.
She had no plans to do the same. As infuriating as he was, Finian Conlan was her partner, her closest friend. One of the few people outside her family who she trusted completely. They were ride or die. Maybe ride and die, because there were no guarantees in black ops. Grace would always have his back. And as she only admitted to herself in her most private of moments, he would always have her heart.